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'Minority' claim still dogging Warren

Sentinel & Enterprise

Updated:
10/05/2012 06:33:55 AM EDT

By Peter Lucas

It is the issue that will not go away.

For two debates in a row in the hotly contested U.S. Senate fight between incumbent Sen. Scott Brown and challenger Elizabeth Warren, the lead-off question has dealt not with unemployment or the economy, but whether Warren is really a Native American or merely a Cherokee of convenience, i.e., a fake Indian.

And despite charges from Warren's cheerleaders in the media that Brown is behind the attacks on her alleged Native-American background and the allegation that she has used her "minority" background to get ahead in academia, in both cases the question was raised by debate moderators, not Brown, although Brown has enthusiastically gone after her on the subject.

In the first debate, for instance, the issue was raised by debate moderator Jon Keller of WBZ-TV, Channel 4. In Tuesday's debate, it was the first question brought up by David Gregory of "Meet the Press" fame.

In both cases, Brown has enthusiastically hammered away at her on the matter, charging that Warren listed herself as a minority simply to get ahead at the expense of legitimate minorities. Along these lines, overzealous Brown supporters were caught mocking Warren in a video, chanting Indian war whoops and making tomahawk chops. This would have made a perfect line of attack for Warren to go after Brown during the debate, but she failed to do so.

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The fact of the matter is that Warren, the Harvard law professor, has contributed greatly to the controversy over her highly dubious Native American ancestry, first by failing to concisely address the issue head-on when it initially was raised by the Boston Herald seven months ago, and then by keeping the matter alive with her frequently run television ad that repeats previous explanations attributing her belief in her Native American background to unsubstantiated family lore.

Granted Warren had to answer Brown's critical ads, but the big television buy not only has kept the issue in the forefront of the campaign, it has taken time, money and energy away from other, more important issues. Still, the fact that her campaign decided to spend so much money on television advertising to deal with the issues shows how deeply it has cut into her campaign and how much it has hurt.

What has amazed political watchers is how her highly paid team of political consultants has let the issue of her alleged American Indian ancestry get so out of hand. It is the type of issue that should have been addressed and dealt with in a press conference when the Herald first broke the story. Instead Warren has been all over the place on the issue, and it has been allowed to fester for weeks.

In between, Warren has often made the matter worse by declining to meet with representatives from the Cherokee community, headed by Twila Barnes, a Cherokee genealogist, when they came to Boston to meet with her in June, and also when she also refused to meet with a Native-American delegation to the national Democratic Party Convention last month in Charlotte, N.C., where she was a featured speaker.

While the matter of her background may not be a game changer in the campaign, it is the type of issue that remains stuck in the minds of voters because Warren has not only been unable to put the issue to bed, but has made it worse by keeping it alive.

"I can't change who I am," Warren said during Tuesday's debate, adding that she never took advantage of her alleged minority status when the issue of character came up. Brown accused her of using her so-called minority status to advance her academic career.

In a statement that she should have made weeks ago, Warren said, "I think character is how you live your life. I am the daughter of a janitor who ended up as a professor at Harvard Law School and working for the president of the United States. I have taught school, I have taught generations of students, and, I hope, occasionally inspired a few of them. And I have worked hard for 30 years to make the legal system just a little bit fairer for people."

It was a solid statement, although it did not answer questions about her ancestry. Perhaps there are no answers and family lore is all that Warren is left with. And family lore won't cut it.

When Gregory asked Warren if she had any regrets over the matter, Warren replied: "You know, I wish I had been faster in answering the question. But the truth is the truth."

Yes, Warren may believe she is descended from Native Americans, but the truth is that her story is a fairy tale.

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